Live Action Films has released three more videos as part of their on-going undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood. The three videos are from three different clinics in Virginia and, according to Live Action, they are unedited and complete.

In a written statement, Live Action founder Lila Rose said: Today, we are sending Attorney General Cuccinelli and Virginia law enforcement officials new, disturbing footage from three Virginia clinics. The footage explicitly shows Planned Parenthood staff willing to engage in activity that sexually exploits minors and young women. The evidence continues to mount, and shows a clear pattern where Planned Parenthood is willing aid and abet the sex-trafficking industry. These are abhorrent practices and it is time Planned Parenthood be held accountable.”

Richmond, Virginia Planned Parenthood Full Video:

Planned Parenthood staffer: “We don’t necessarily look at the legal status, like I said. Abortion appointments do require photo ID. It’s nothing as far as records. It’s just photo ID that’s ever going to be required.”

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THEN (April 4, 2010):
Administration officials say growing labor force is “a great sign”

Behind the high unemployment rate, “there’s just been a tremendous increase in the labor force,” Christina Romer, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’  “Over the last three months, we’ve added more than a million people to the labor force. And that’s actually, that’s a great sign,” Romer added. “That’s a sign that people that might have been discouraged dropped out because of the terrible recession, have started to have some hope again and are looking for work again.”

NOW (February 4, 2011):
What will the Administration say now that the labor force is shrinking?

Facts reveal sharp declines in the labor force since the March 2010 data Romer described above, with especially steep drops in the last two months.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force has shrunk by 709,000 since March 2010.  Given this reality, will the Administration now say this trend is a “not great sign” indicating people have “lost hope again”?

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Though Free Press outwardly expressed condemnation at the approval of the Comcast-NBC Merger earlier this month, they really got a lot of what they bargained for.  After their extensive lobbying blitz – with approximately 35 different FCC communiqués, including over 20 individual meetings with FCC Commissioners and their staff – it’s clear they helped shape many of the agreement’s “voluntary” commitments.

Merger decrees represent a feeding trough of sorts for the public interest group (PIG) community.  Appendix G of the Order reveals the length at which these PIGs sup, stretching nearly 60 pages of the 279 –page Order.

Appendix G wasn’t just slopped together, though.  PIGs are an organized lot.  Witness one such effort – a Free Press-attended, “funding community” event last summer, with participants there brainstorming on what they could demand from Comcast in order for the merger to go through.

Taken from published notes at that meeting, the participants wondered aloud:

…NBC/Universal is going to merge with Comcast. Can we require rules around this merger? When Comcast and Universal come together, it will diminish the incentives for the owner of that infrastructure to do local news. *What should we be asking for? A $300 million fund to incentivize public media? Trade groups to protect jobs in journalism?* We have to fight now and not look back and wonder what we should have done.

Boy, PIGs get fat, but hogs become bacon.  Yet that doesn’t stop these gluttons.  I love also the hubris of non-government officials saying, “Can we require rules around this merger…” Er, “We require”?  It shows just how corruptible and voluntary-as-a-mugging the whole process is.  Simply amazing stuff, more akin to Egyptian thuggery than American Democracy.

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President Obama, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, was right to focus on the challenges the United States faces as domestic companies try to compete with low-cost global competitors. But he was wrong to suggest that the United States can “win the future” by getting Washington more involved in innovation and education.

As the president conceded elsewhere, Washington is, in fact, a big part of the problem—with high corporate tax rates and excessive regulation.

Just a week earlier in a Wall Street Journal article, the president elaborated on this, rhetorically declaring a truce with business and laying out the administration’s strategy for moving “toward a 21st-century regulatory system.”

Mr. Obama said this new system would need to strike a balance between the innovativeness, job-creating capacity and robust growth produced by free markets and the responsibility of government to impose “common-sense rules” to protect the public. He called for a “government-wide review of . . . rules already on the books,” and said that “careful consideration” would be given to the costs and benefits of all pending regulations. But as Yogi Berra once said, “This is like deja vu all over again.”

Presidents Clinton and Reagan both signed executive orders requiring that proposed federal regulations be implemented only if their economic benefits exceeded the costs of complying with them. Reagan even established a branch within the Office of Management and Budget—the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)—to make sure executive branch agencies complied. The executive orders by and large were ineffective.

In fact, the federal government has been expanding its control of the private economy since the 1890s, on the theory that vulnerable people must be protected from cradle to grave by an omniscient bureaucracy that knows what’s best for them. The growth in regulation typically has been justified by analyses, prepared by the regulatory bureaus themselves, which grossly overstate regulation’s benefits and understate its costs.

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From LifeNews.org:

Following the release of a video that has received nationwide attention showing Planned Parenthood staff at a New Jersey abortion center helping alleged sexual traffickers cover up their crimes with abortions and STD testing, Governor Chris Christie has vetoed a bill funding Planned Parenthood.

A new undercover video shows Planned Parenthood officials in New Jersey telling a pimp and his prostitute assistant how they can get abortions for young teenage girls who, Planned Parenthood officials are informed, are Asians in the country illegally and forced into the sex trade. The staffer was later fired for her actions.

The Perth Amboy abortion center where the video is filmed is the second-largest Planned Parenthood center operated by Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey and the abortion business plans to double its number of abortion centers in the state.

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The appointment by President Obama of Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric, to head the new President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness is just another sign of the commitment of the Obama Administration to “Crony Capitalism”. For over 100 years GE was known for business innovation and manufacturing excellence. But long gone are the uplifting moments in our nation’s history when company spokesman Ronald Reagan proudly exalted GE’s motto: “Progress is our most important product.”

Mr. Immelt as the newly appointed pied-piper for the future for American industry suggests, (as Immelt wrote to shareholders):

“The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also, an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.”

For the last three years, Mr. Immelt has been in the vanguard for this new relationship between business and government, as a member of the Administration’s “Economic Recovery Advisory Panel”.

During the wild Congressional spending spree of the last couple of years, GE miraculously became the largest beneficiary of the government’s Troubled Asset Recovery Program (TARP) bank bailout. Although GE did not initially qualify for TARP, the company’s $18 million annual investment in battalions of Washington DC lobbyists convinced Administration regulators to push that “reset” button and extend TARP guarantees and subsidies to GE. Public records demonstrate GE Capital, the company’s massive financing arm, pocketed $120 Billion in loans from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation at interest rates of less than 1% and snatched 25% of the entire $340 billion in subsidies from “Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program” (TLGP) rescue fund.

Unlike other highly regulated financial institutions that secured Federal back-stops, including Bank of America, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase; GE was not required to curtail use of risky derivatives or pass the Fed’s liquidity “stress test” to qualify for taxpayer funding. GE was also exempted from new regulations restricting executive compensation at firms like AIG and Goldman Sachs. Mr. Immelt took advantage of GE’s special treatment to pick up $30.9 million in total compensation over the last three years, while GE shareholders suffered a catastrophic 46% loss as the company’s shares crumbled from $35 to $19.

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Just prior to the introduction of Rep. Paul Ryan’s response to the State of the Union Address,  a cohort of mine tweeted, “But first, Paul Ryan’s rebuttal, which will be like Ayn Rand hosting Picture Pages.”  I couldn’t help but laugh at this thought which for the most part ended up being spot on, though I don’t necessarily think Jon Galt’s Picture Pages would be such a terrible idea.  As many of us know, Rand speaks a great deal of truth in her works, and a portion of it has seemed almost prophetical over the last several years.  Spoon feeding progressives Rand sounds like a great solution since they are having such a difficult time understanding the big boy versions.

That being said, Ryan’s speech was for the most part what I wanted – and expected – to hear with the exception of one key failure.  Towards the end of the speech Ryan remarked that,

“We believe government’s role is both vital and limited – to defend the nation from attack and provide for the common defense … to secure our borders… to protect innocent life… to uphold our laws and Constitutional rights … to ensure domestic tranquility and equal opportunity … and to help provide a safety net for those who cannot provide for themselves.”

I grabbed my pocket copy of the Constitution and thumbed through it desperately looking for the section in which the U.S. Republic is given the authority to provide public safety nets.  It simply wasn’t there.

The Congressman spent a great deal of time speaking on limited government, free enterprise, founding principles, and individual responsibility. In fact, toward the end of the speech he contradicted his earlier statement about safety nets by remarking that the “American system of limited government” had “done more to help the poor than any other economic system ever designed.”

The fact that the initial statement was made, and then additionally contradicted is concerning.  It impresses upon me the notion that our representation still does not get it. It is still…not yours to give.

I invite Congressman Ryan along with anyone else serving our country in any area of leadership or bureaucracy to read through the story of Colonel Davy Crocket in Not Yours to Give.  Feel free to argue the validity of the occurrence, but the principle within remains which I present in part:

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The Progressive left is in full attack mode against Glenn Beck for his assertion that what’s happening in Egypt is not about democracy, rather it is about re-establishing a Muslim supremacist Caliphate.

Gaurdian
Middle East unrest according to Glenn Beck and friends

Media Matters
Yes, Tantaros, “Lunatic Theories” About Egypt Have Aired On Fox

Business Insider
Chris Matthews: Glenn Beck Is Today’s Number One ‘Exporter Of Fear’

US News and World Report
Glenn Beck’s Egypt Protest Theories Show He’s Finally Lost It

Media Matters
In Egypt Protests, Beck Sees … A New Islamic Caliphate And Communist Revolution?

Sad. Even these leading progressives don’t read the Washington Post! From 2006:

Come the caliphate
Saturday, January 21, 2006

The idea of restoring the body that governed and united the world’s Muslims for more than 1,000 years is beginning to resonate again. Karl Vick explains. The plan was to fly a hijacked plane into a national landmark on live television. The year was 1998, the country was Turkey, and the rented plane ended up grounded by weather. Court records show the Islamic extremist who planned to commandeer the cockpit did not actually know how to fly.

But if the audacious scheme prefigured September 11, 2001, it also highlighted a cause that, seven years later, President George W Bush has used to define the war against terrorism. What the ill-prepared Turkish plotters told investigators they aimed to do was strike a dramatic blow toward reviving Islam’s caliphate, the institution that had nominally governed the world’s Muslims for nearly all of the almost 1,400 years since the death of the prophet Mohammed.

…….

Al-Qaeda named its Internet newscast, which debuted in September, The Voice of the Caliphate.

Yet the caliphate is also esteemed by many ordinary Muslims. For most, its revival is not an urgent concern. Public opinion polls show immediate issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and discrimination rank as more pressing.

…….

But while Turks won self-rule, most of the former caliphate was divided among European colonial powers. One Arab scholar called it “the division of Muslim lands into measly pieces which call themselves nations.”

This is what inspired the group most directly focused on the push for a new caliphate, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), or Party of Liberation. The group, which claims to be active in 40 countries, began in 1953 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. But while the Brotherhood, which also favors a caliphate, embraced realpolitik, growing into a potent opposition force in Syria and Egypt, Hizb ut-Tahrir charted a more subversive path.

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Today, in 2004, Facebook was founded. 7 years ago. Just saying…

Common Cause would have us believe they aren’t responsible for hateful rhetoric spewed at the Right from protesters at a recent Koch brothers protest they organized. A statement was issued only after it came to light that a protester had called for the lynching of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. But a review of the official event video proves that Common Cause actually worked to inspire such hate through the selection of official speakers. They cannot simply disown it now.

Common Cause condemns bigotry, hateful statements caught on film at rally

Common Cause’s 40 year history of holding power accountable has been marked by a commitment to decency and civility – in public and private. So we are of course outraged to find that a few of those attending the events around a gathering Common Cause helped to organize Sunday near Palm Springs voiced hateful, narrow-minded sentiments to an interviewer in the crowd.

In their own clips of chosen and highlighted speakers for the formal panel they organized at the protest, you will repeatedly hear the Right, their honest political opposition, cast as hateful, evil, cruel, and worse. Writing at Hot Air, John Sexton pointed out just some of the official unhinged rhetoric from Van Jones at the Common Cause event.

We will not live on an economic plantation run by the Koch brothers.

In this video, another official panelist, DeAnn McEwan, claims the Koch’s “have their fingers on the pillows that are suffocating all of us,” while citing the plight of various individuals needing intensive medical treatment. In effect, official Common Cause panelist McEwan is accusing the Kochs of being murderers. She even details a patient’s failed struggle to cling to life, in essence, blaming her death squarely on the Kochs. (more…)

Along with the anonymous “Allahpundit,” Ed Morrissey is the key to the success of Hot Air, one of the biggest commentary and video sites on the glorious system of tubes we call the Internet. Day in and day out, Morrissey, who also hosts a web radio show and has recently started writing for The Week, weighs in on politics and culture from a center-right POV that is, he says, is getting more and libertarian out of deference to reality.

When I met recently with James Gwartney, the highly-esteemed Florida State University economist, I expected Dr. Gwartney to be pleased to learn that my high school son Richard was following up a required semester of AP Macroeconomics by taking an AP Microeconomics course as an elective.

After all, Dr. Gwartney had inspired Richard to study economics at a Milton Friedman Day luncheon last July. And Dr. Gwartney has a passion for helping students share his passion for economic reasoning.

But Dr. Gwartney’s response to my enthusiastic report was rather chilly to say the least. In fact, it felt like a cold shower. And with good reason, I would come to learn.

Dr. Gwartney and two of his colleagues recently published a scholarly article in the Econ Journal Watch which takes aim at the content in both Advanced Placement economics courses. Gwartney & Co. say these courses tend to play down the most interesting and important aspects of economics courses – introducing students to economic reasoning – while overemphasizing the more mechanistic aspects of the discipline.

In addition, Gwartney and his colleagues say AP economics courses need to give greater emphasis to “the integration of property rights, entrepreneurship, and dynamic competition.” And they say that AP economics courses need to correct a serious imbalance in the way that markets and governments are presented.

“’Market failure’ is a component of the courses,” they note, “but there is no parallel treatment of ‘government failure.’”

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We are all supposed to sacrifice, right?  Well, not all of us:

The tennis court at former President Jimmy Carter‘s private home is swept twice a day, his pool is cleaned daily and his grass cut, his flower beds weeded and his windows washed on a regular basis — all at taxpayers’ expense.

Under an arrangement with the National Park Service, taxpayers are responsible for the exterior of Mr. Carter‘s home in Plains, Ga. — to the tune of $67,841 last year alone. In exchange, the government obtains the right to add the home to the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site when he and his wife pass away.

Other presidents have had similar life estate agreements calling for their properties to be turned over after their deaths, but to have taxpayers footing the bill for upkeep and maintenance of the Carters’ property appears to be unique, and it’s drawing fire at a time of tight federal budgets.

Who knew the character Archie Bunker had it so right.

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Hon. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II

Office of the Attorney General

900 East Main Street

Richmond, VA 23219

Dear Attorney General Cuccinelli:

This morning, Live Action released undercover video footage that we believe is evidence that Planned Parenthood in Virginia aids and abets the sexual abuse and prostitution of minors. Based on previous investigative journalism findings that multiple Planned Parenthood locations were willing to cover up sexual abuse and this new evidence that other Planned Parenthood locations facilitate human sex trafficking, it appears that blatant violations of Virginia law may well be occurring at Planned Parenthood facilities and affiliates in the state.

So long as Planned Parenthood operates in such a reckless manner, young women and girls in Virginia are at risk of forced abortion and sexual exploitation. On Tuesday, Live Action released a similar undercover video in New Jersey. New Jersey Attorney General Paula Dow has begun an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s compliance with the law in her state, and we are asking you to do the same in Virginia. (more…)

As oil prices continue to climb, a backlog of more than 100 offshore drilling plans for the Gulf of Mexico are awaiting approval from the Obama administration, according to federal data.

The federal government has not approved a single new exploratory drilling plan in the Gulf of Mexico since lifting its deepwater drilling moratorium on Oct. 12. There are currently 103 plans awaiting review by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

The information reveals that the Obama administration — not the oil industry — is the culprit for the slowdown of drilling activity in the Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico accounts for more than 25 percent of domestic oil production.

“These new findings prove that BOEMRE cannot claim it isn’t receiving job-creating plans from oil exploration and production companies,” said Gregory Rusovich, chairman of the Business Council of Greater New Orleans and the River Region. “The plans are there. Until BOEMRE reviews the 103 plans awaiting approval, our economy’s stability remains in jeopardy.”

Every two weeks Greater New Orleans Inc. releases a Gulf Permit Index based on publicly available federal data. Thursday’s index revealed an 88 percent decline in deepwater permits compared to the historical average. Not a single deepwater permit was approved in January. (more…)

The internal revenue code is nightmarishly complex, as illustrated by this video. Americans spend more than 7 billion hours each year in a hopeless effort to figure out how to deal with more than 7 million words of tax law and regulation.

Why does this mess exist? The simple answer is that politicians benefit from the current mess, using their power over tax laws to raise campaign cash, reward friends, punish enemies, and play politics. This argument certainly has merit, and it definitely helps explain why the political class is so hostile to a simple and fair flat tax.

But a big part of the problem is that tax lawyers dominate the tax-lawmaking process. Almost all the decision-making professionals at the tax-writing committees (Ways & Means Committee in the House and Finance Committee in the Senate) are lawyers, as are the vast majority of tax policy people at the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service.

This has always rubbed me the wrong way. Yes, some lawyers are needed if for no other reason than to figure out how new loopholes, deductions, credits, and other provisions can be integrated into Rube-Goldberg monstrosity of existing law.

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One of the most disturbing results of an adult-focused public education system is the constant focus on money. There is an insatiable thirst on the part of Big Labor to constantly increase spending on public education, because the teachers’ unions are mostly concerned with their pensions, paychecks and the union coffers.

Unlike workers in the private sector who have had to accept wage and benefit concessions just to stay employed, the teacher unions use the collective bargaining process to demand lavish health and pension benefits, annual automatic pay raises (regardless of classroom performance), sick day buyouts and many other costly benefits that send school budgets reeling into red ink.

Watch “Kids Aren’t Cars” Episode 2: ‘Give Up the Bucks!’

For teachers’ unions, it is all about the money.  A protester we encountered at a pro-tax increase rally last year in Springfield, Illinois underscored the point.  “Where is the money?” she asked as she rubbed her fingers together.  “Save our children!  Give up the bucks!  Where’s the cash?  We need it fast,” she said.  Of course she does, or she may need to take a pay freeze or start contributing to her pension plan. She was saavy enough to work children into her demand.

The unions and the education establishment judge Americans’ value of public education based on how much we’re willing to spend.  Americans, on the other hand, are beginning to question what they’re getting for all this money they are “investing.”

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Prepare to be outraged.

When government officials pitched the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “bailouts” to the American people, we were told the purpose of this “taxpayer investment” was to bring solvency to two institutions that were simply “too big to fail.”

Nobody ever said anything about forcing the taxpayers to pay the legal bills of the political Fannie and Freddie executives who were key to creating the housing crisis. But that’s exactly what’s happening.

The New York Times broke the story:

Since the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taxpayers have spent more than $160 million defending the mortgage finance companies and their former top executives in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud. The cost was a closely guarded secret until last week, when the companies and their regulator produced an accounting at the request of Congress.

The bulk of those expenditures — $132 million — went to defend Fannie Mae and its officials in various securities suits and government investigations into accounting irregularities that occurred years before the subprime lending crisis erupted. The legal payments show no sign of abating.

One of the crooked executives specifically referenced by the Times is none other than Franklin Raines, Bill Clinton’s former budget director, who took a job as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2004. Raines allegedly cooked the books at Fannie, issued countless dubious mortgages, and then took a huge bonus before leaving the company. He is one of three executives who divvied up a tidy $24.2 million from the taxpayers to defend themselves in court.

Raines’ tenure at Fannie Mae was marked by massive corruption and mismanagement. And we’re supposed to bail him out, too? Once again the taxpayers are thrust into an Alice in Wonderland world where the government uses tax dollars to help politicians defend against government investigations.

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